Geographic Range: The Eastern Newt Notophthalmus viridescens, is one of six species in the Family Salamandridae native to North America. This newt ranges throughout most of eastern North America, from the Canadian Maritime Provinces west to the Great Lakes and South to Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. There are four recognized subspecies: the Red-Spotted Newt of the eastern and northeastern U.S. and Canada, the Central Newt of the central states and the deep south, the Broken-Striped Newt of the Carolina coastal plains, and the Peninsula Newt of peninsular Florida.

Habitat: Adults are most commonly found in small, densely vegetated ponds, but can also be found in shallows of large lakes, river sloughs and backwaters, and swamps and marshes. Efts are found under rocks and logs in forested areas near the breeding ponds.

Physical Description: The aquatic larvae have laterally compressed tails, olive colored skin, and feathery gills. The hatchlings range in length from 7 to 9mm and have fairly smooth skin with little toxicity. Although the length of the larval period and the size at metamorphosis varies, they usually transform into a terrestrial "eft" stage after 2 to 5 months. The eft is reddish-orange in color with two rows of black-bordered red spots. It has well-developed lungs, limbs, and eyelids. The eft's skin is dry and somewhat rough and its color is a sign of its toxicity to predators. The eft has a long-slender body with a laterally flattened tail and ranges in length from 3.4 to 4.5 cm. The eft usually transforms into the mature, breeding stage after 2 to 3 years on land. The adult newt varies in color depending on its age and sex, ranging from yellowish-brown to greenish-brown dorsally and having black-bordered red spots. Its ventral color is yellow and black spots speckle the belly. The newt is slightly moist (just enough to keep its skin from drying out), with rough-scaleless skin and indistinct coastal grooves. Its size ranges in length from 7 to 12.4 cm. Notopthalmus viridescens has small eyes with a horizontal pupil. During the breeding season, males can be easily identified by their enlarged hind legs, with black-horny structures on the inner surfaces of their thighs and toe tips (used for gripping females during mating), swollen vents, and broadly keeled (high-wavy crest) tails.

Diet: Carnivorous at all of its life stages, Eastern Newts use both chemical and visual cues to locate food. The aquatic larvae eat small invertebrates including water fleas, snails, and beetle larvae; the terrestrial efts eat small invertebrates, mainly those found in humus and leaf litter, including snails, spring tails, and soil mites; the adult newts eat mainly midge larva and other aquatic immature stages of insects. Adults seem to rely more on visual cues when feeding. They don't have a specialized diet, but the temperature and water clarity, as well as prey density, can effect the feeding process.

Reproduction: The Eastern Newt has a lifespan of 12 to 15 years. Both males and females reach sexual maturity around the age of 3. The breeding season begins in late Winter and lasts until early Spring; at this time, the female is heavy with eggs and actively seeking a male. The courtship involves a unique form of amplexus. Females are attracted by the male's spots and he lures them to him by making fanning motions with his tail and wiggling, causing an enticing odor (pheromone) to be released. The male positions himself above and forward of the female, gripping her sides just behind her forelegs with his hindlimbs and rubbing her snout with the side of his head. Males will deposit a sperm packet on the bottom of the pond and the female will proceed to pick it up with her cloaca, later using the sperm to fertilize her eggs. Males are often in competition with each other, but rival males who try to break up a pair already involved in amplexus are rarely successful. Sometimes the rival male may drop his sperm packet anyway and the female may pick up the packet when courtship with the other male is over. Male to male courtship is also common. Males tend to eat the sperm packets that are dropped in this case.

Eggs: Oviposition can take several weeks, because the female will only lay a few, widely scattered eggs, each day. It's still uncertain whether or not females will lay all of their eggs in a breeding season, however they do lay between 200 and 400 single, jelly-covered eggs on submerged vegetation, each season. As soon as the process is finished, the female newt swims away leaving her eggs to survive on their own. The incubation of the eggs is somewhat dependent on temperature, but generally lasts from 3 to 8 weeks.

Larvae: In early fall, 3 to 4 months later, the aquatic larvae loses its gills, acquires sac-like lungs (heart transforms from two chambered heart to three, capable of supporting lungs), and emerges onto land as an eft. Two to 3 years later, the eft develops a powerful, flattened tail and returns to the water to breed, as an adult, and remains there the rest of its life, if water is permanent. (Lacking permanent water, adult newts will estivate and overwinter on land and enter vernal ponds in spring to breed.) Some Eastern Newt populations skip the eft stage and immediately transform into breeding adults. There are some coastal populations of Eastern Newts that become reproductively mature while retaining a gilled "larval" form. In other populations, newts enter the eft stage but never undergo a complete second metamorphosis, and enter the water only to breed. Both of these latter two cases may be in response to harsher than average environmental conditions.

The Red-spotted Newt is a Facultative Species and may be found in vernal pools, but can reproduce in other aquatic habitats where they are available.

Natural History: Adults and larvae eat crustaceans, aquatic insects, and mollusks. Terrestrial efts eat insects, snails, worms, and other small invertebrates. Newts have a rather complicated life history. Efts may spend up to seven years on land before they transform into aquatic adults.

Vernal Pool Conservation

What you can do:

• Resist the temptation to clean up in and around vernal pool habitats. Leave trees, bushes, and understory vegetation, as well as brush, logs, and dead trees.
• Leave a buffer of natural vegetation around the pool for as great a distance as possible back from the edge of the pool's high-water mark. A buffer of at least 100 feet will help maintain water quality, but will do little to protect amphibians living around the pool. Vernal pool breeders require at least 300 yards of natural habitat around their pools in order to survive.
• Do not fill in the pool, even when it is dry, by dumping leaves or other debris in it.
• In areas with more than one pool, try to maintain travel corridors of natural vegetation between them. If some clearing is necessary, avoid drastic alterations that remove most of the trees and other cover. If habitat alterations are necessary, conduct these activities between November and March, when amphibians are less likely to be present. Activities done when the ground is frozen will cause much less damage to the soil than those conducted during warmer months.
• Avoid activities that inadvertently alter the movement of surface water (hydrology) of the upland area that drains into the pool. Digging ditches and similar activities can change runoff into the pool, thereby altering its flooding cycle.
• Do not dig into the bottom of the pool, even when it is dry, as this will disturb the non-permeable layer of soil that allows the pool to flood.
• Work with local conservation commissions and other interested individuals to identify and document vernal pools in your area.

  *Adapted from the Audubon Society of New Hampshire and the Nongame and Endangered Wildlife Program of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department.

Photo by Tom Lautzenheiser.

A vernal pool is a temporary or semi-permanent body of water, typically filled in the spring by snow melt and spring rain, and holding water for two or three months in the spring and summer.

Vernal pools form in contained basin depressions, meaning that while they may have an inlet, they have no permanent outlet forming a downstream connection to other aquatic systems. They are typically small, rarely exceeding 50 m in width, and are usually shallow. While most are filled with meltwater and spring rains, others may be filled during the fall or with a combination of seasonal surface runoff and intersection with seasonally high groundwater tables. Typical substrates are formed primarily of dense leaf litter. While most vernal pools are found in upland forest, several types have been identified, including floodplain basins, swamp pools and marsh pools.

Periodic drying is a key feature of the ecology of vernal pools. Drying precludes the establishment of permanent fish populations, which would otherwise act as predators on the eggs and larvae of species that live or breed in the pool. While a typical vernal pool is dry during at least part of the year, others may contain some water throughout the year (or for several years), but a combination of shallow water, summer heat, winter freezing, and periodic oxygen depletion prevent the establishment of fish populations.

Terms:

Obligate Species: Species must live or breed in vernal pools.
Facultative Species: Species may be found in vernal pools, but can reproduce in other aquatic habitats where they are available.
Acanthal ridges: Ridges (with light lines) extending from the eyes to the nostrils in spring salamanders.
Costal grooves: The grooves present along the sides of the bodies of many salamanders. When counting them for identification purposes, include only those between the front legs and the hind legs.
Keeled tail: A salamander tail that narrows to a knife edge along its dorsal (top) surface.
Nasolabial grooves: Narrow grooves that extend from the nostrils to the mouth in salamanders of the family Plethodontidae.

Riemland, S. 2000. "Notophthalmus viridescens" (On-line), Animal Diversity Web
Accessed March 04, 2004 at
https://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Notophthalmus_viridescens.html

The Roger Tory Peterson Institute is a national, non-profit nature education organization with headquarters in Jamestown, New York, birthplace of world renowned artist and naturalist, Roger Tory Peterson (1908-1996). In collaboration with the Center for Applied Technologies in Education, the Roger Tory Peterson Institute has provided these animal profiles to offer a glimpse into the diversity of Vernal Pools in our region.